


Smartest man in the room

by katybar



Series: Phone Screen Ficlets [3]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Established Relationship, John Watson has an interesting take on dirty talk, M/M, Memory (as opposed to memories)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 14:14:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11163549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katybar/pseuds/katybar





	Smartest man in the room

Until the summer when Mycroft, at the ripe old age of 14, had begun to pack up his stodgy belongings for boarding school, Sherlock had been his Personal Project. It was Mycroft who taught him the system of mnemonics, the method of loci, and the building of a mind vault. Mycroft who quizzed him on his visual memory and bullied him into deductions. It was clear to them both that their mother had Been Something at some point, and their father never would be, so Mycroft's dubious care reassured Sherlock, wove a net of security around him.

It was only after Mycroft left that Sherlock realized how much that net entangled and isolated him.

Put otherwise, as Mycroft frequently reminded him, they had both thought he was an idiot until they met other children.

He spent his school days being the most intelligent and most vulnerable boy on his class. At uni, the most brilliant and the most drugged out. Finally clean through the combined efforts of Mycroft and the detective Sherlock was sure was being paid to mind him, he was the most astounding and most off-putting man on every investigation.

Then he met John Watson.

It's not often you come across a real doctor whilst gathered around a corpse. And the thing of it is, Sherlock is brilliant but also undisciplined. He might take up kinesiology in the morning and be a world class expert on the gleno-humeral joint by lunchtime, but then he'll hare off examining the edges of poker cards under a dissecting scope and never open the 100 quid knes textbook again. John might be an idiot like the rest, but he has a mind as pugnacious as a bulldog and has spent years studying just the human body.

And, unlike Mycroft, he thought Sherlock was brilliant and said it out loud, repeatedly.

At night when Sherlock's can't(or won't) sleep, John recites the bones for him, their protuberances, crests and fossa. He glides his hands along aponeuroses and skims insertion points and all the while he murmurs in Sherlock's ear.


End file.
